Osborne looks at lumber

By DOUG MCDONOUGHHerald Managing Editor

Published 7:00 pm, Saturday, March 20, 2010

With a lifetime that touched upon three centuries and a career that spanned three-score years, Edward Mays Osborne held a unique vantage point to observe the growth and development of the lumber business in and around Plainview.

Osborne went to work for Higginbotham-Bartlett lumber company in Stanton in 1924 as a bookkeeper. In 1925, after about eight months there, he was transferred to Plainview for a six-month stint before being sent to Lamesa.

While at Lamesa, he and Laura Higginbotham were married, with the newlyweds settling in Plainview when Osborne was named manager of the Plainview yard in early 1926.

He remained at that post until 1950 when Osborne was named district manager for several Higginbotham-Bartlett lumber yards while also serving as executive vice president of the company.

Osborne took on the title and additional duties of chairman of the board in 1979 before retiring in 1983 at age 86.

Up until he died in 2002 at age 106, Osborne continued to keep abreast of developments in the industry and was considered one of its foremost senior statesmen.

Osborne’s daughter, Ethel Ramsower, recently was going through her dad’s personal papers when she found a page titled "Recollections About The Lumber Business" that her father penned about the time he retired. In it, Osborne records the early history of the local lumber industry.

"There were a great number of problems associated with the building of a house, barn or business on the windswept, treeless plains on the Texas Panhandle before the coming of the railroad," Osborne wrote. "Everything had to be freighted from Amarillo in horse-drawn wagons and it took a lot of patience because the round trip took 10 days."

According to Osborne, A.M. Stoddard started a wagon freight service that ran "on a more or less regular basis" from Plainview to Amarillo shortly after moving here from Jacksboro in 1898 — that would have been just two years after Osborne was born in the Rust County community of Pinehill.

With eight "good" horses, Stoddard was able to make the long freight run back and forth to Amarillo twice a month — with two, three or more freight wagons coupled together like a train.

"When hauling products like flour, Stoddard would have a barrel open and he would sell or trade some of it to the few people who lived along his route," Osborne explained. "He had one customer that brought him a gallon of milk to trade for a gallon of flour every trip." Other customers had Stoddard bring them a keg of whiskey about once a month. "It is told that on at least one occasion a keg broke partly open, but some fast thinking kept most of it from spilling on the ground."

Plainview grew slowly until the arrival of the railroad in 1907. "The following years saw a lot of growth as the population increased and the building materials, as well as other products, became easier and faster to get," Osborne observed. "These booming years saw a lot of growth in the lumber business."

A.G. McAdams Lumber Co. opened a lumber yard in Plainview shortly after the arrival of the Santa Fe Railroad. Ten years later, in 1917, the McAdams lumber yards in Plainview, Lockney, Floydada, Hale Center and Lubbock were sold to the Higginbotham-Bartlett Company of Dallas. "It was an established company that had line yards along the Texas and Pacific Railroad route from Fort Worth to El Paso."

W.B. Akins was named manager of Higginbotham-Bartlett’s Plainview yard with Stoddard serving as drayman and being responsible for all deliveries. At that time, J.B. Maxey was one of the main building contractors working out of the yard, and "he built most of the early buildings in Plainview," Osborne wrote. About 1920, both Atkins and Maxey went to Lubbock with Atkins becoming manager of the Higginbotham-Bartlett lumber yard there and Maxey developing a building trades business in that community.

The next manager of Higginbotham-Bartlett in Plainview was Jim Williams, who was followed shortly by B.T. Higginbotham in 1924. Osborne took the helm of the local yard in 1926.

In remembering the early days of the local building business, Osborne said lumber yards carried a limited number of items, including cedar posts and barbed wire to fence home and farms, pipe, pump rods and windmills to bring up the water, 2x4s and 2x6s for framing houses and barns, flooring, siding, shiplap, roofing, windows, doors, hinges, nails, locks, paint, boxing planks, rough fencing boards, cedar blocking, cement, sand and gravel, clay tile, brick and some one-inch boards.

"Cost of materials to build a five-room house would run from $250 to $1,500 in the 1930s," Osborne explained.

"During the Depression, all building materials were very cheap, like everything else. You could build a good home for $6.50 per square-foot. After World War II, prices began to rise, but the inflation was gradual until the 1970s," he wrote in about 1983. "In the past 15 years, the cost of building new houses has risen from about $10 per square-foot to $50 or more."

Today, according to the Web site B4UBUILD.com, new-home construction costs can range from $80 to $200 per square-foot, with the "average" home costing about $118 per square-foot.

Plainview’s Higginbotham-Bartlett lumber yard closed in 2002, although the company continues to operate several facilities throughout the region.